Bifunctional vanadium doped mesoporous Co3O4 on nickel foam towards highly efficient overall urea and water splitting in the alkaline electrolyte

Developing more active and stable electrode materials for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and urea oxidation reaction (UOR) is necessary for electrocatalytic water and urea oxidation which can be used to generate hydrogen. Here, a low-cost vanadium-doped mesoporous cobalt oxide on Ni foam (V/meso-Co/NF) electrodes are obtained via the grouping of an in-situ citric acid (CA)-assisted evaporation-induced self-assembly (EISA) method and electrophoretic deposition process, and work as highly efficient and long-lasting electrocatalytic materials for OER/UOR. In particular, V/meso-Co/NF electrodes require 329 mV overpotential to maintain a 50 mA/cm2, with exceptional long-term durability of 30 h. Interestingly, V/meso-Co/NF also exhibits excellent electrocatalytic UOR performance, reaching 50 and 100 mA/cm2 versus RHE at low potentials of 1.34 and 1.35 V, respectively. By employing the V/meso-Co/NF materials as both the anode and cathode, this urea electrolysis assembly V/meso-Co/NF-5 (+,-) reaches current densities of 100 mA cm-2 at 1.62 V in KOH/urea, which is nearly 340 mV lesser than classical water electrolysis. The V/meso-Co/NF-5 electrocatalysts also exhibit remarkable durability for electrocatalytic OERs and UORs. The obtained findings revealed that the synthesized V/meso-Co/NF might be a promising electrode materials for overall urea-rich wastewater management and H2 generation from wastewater.